Helsinki Meeting: What’s the big deal?

The Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin — just the two of them — is about to happen, and people are apoplectic about it. What is going to happen at the meeting? Trump has no agenda, there has been no announcement about the point or contents of the meeting?

People need to lighten up. Trump needs no agenda for this meeting. Putin has it totally under control. Relax!

Trump has promised to bring up “meddling.” However, I assume he’ll be bringing up to apologize for the witch hunt.

Anyway, here is my short list of things Trump will give Putin within a month of the meeting. Not all these things, and there will be things not on this list. But I think there will be things from this list:

1) Pardon Mueller-indicted Russians
2) The Crimea
3) A presidential finding that oil extraction in Siberia is outside any sanctions by the US, including Congress
4) Alaska
5) Syria

Related

Post navigation

99 thoughts on “Helsinki Meeting: What’s the big deal?”

6) Effusive praise of buddy Vladimir for his outstanding World Cup Tournament production ( Oh wait… he’s already done that ).
7) Access to any part of the US government that Putin’s team has not already hacked.
8) An open mind, one that will receive any directives for action, subliminal, hypnotic, or direct, that Vladimir wants to inject.
9) A promise to further weaken the US by exacerbating racial and ethnice divisions.
10) A promise to continue to weaken all US international alliances by insulting and punishing all allies.

Not sure about that one. The indictments are actually toothless, since there is no way those Russians will be sent to the states, the scum-in-chief will realize he can get more mileage by continuing to lie and say it is all a conspiracy and there was no russian meddling. We know a non-significant percentage of tea-baggers, libertarians, and the neither intelligent nor honest folks on the right are in the groups that believe the russians didn’t do anything (despite the unambiguous statements from our intelligence services) or that it doesn’t matter since it kept undesirables out of the White House.

Don’t forget that “love of the country and freedom” means, for the modern right (look at the relevant right-wingers who post here for three data points) that well-off white men can do what they want but women, the poor, and non-whites are sub-human and don’t need to be bothered with.

If it is anything like the meeting with the North Korean dictator, Trump will come back announcing that all problems have been resolved and then a few days later say the opposite. His supporters on and off television will then aver that he never said the first thing he said and the Democrats are just lying about it.

Rarely are you so blatantly dishonest mikeN. The intelligence agencies presented Trump with “incontrovertible” evidence that Russia meddled. Trump asked Putin, putin lied and said “no, we didn’t.” Trump said this:

“My people came to me — [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin — he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,”

Your stupid comments used to be simply a source of comedy — now they are the signs of someone in complete denial of facts.

So Russia fucks with an American Presidential election and Trump doesn’t want to ruffle Russian feathers by saying so.

Because it put him in the White House.

So it’s okay.

Obvz.

We’re getting it here in the UK too. Biggest evah political donation in UK history by Arron Banks to the Brexit campaign and it didn’t come from where he said it came from and nobody knows where the money did come from but every time we look there are more meetings between Banks and Russians. Gold mine deals get discussed. Who knows what else.

Electoral laws about campaign spending were apparently broken too, according to the Electoral Commission, which Brexiteers are trying to discredit.

I’ll chalk you up in the category of not reading the thought process in Russia, unlike the President.

The ‘thought processes in Russia’ are not any reason to wave this away, MikeN. As you are an American citizen, it amazes me to hear you say this. I would expect an American patriot to argue along the lines of ‘fuck their thought processes, this shit will not stand’. But you live and learn.

It’s not about waving it away. It’s about what you do in public vs private. Trump as a Putin co-conspirator or puppet is hard to square with his ordering soldiers to kill dozens of Russians in Syria, sending weapons to Ukraine, expanding US oil and gas extraction, and sending missiles to Poland.

It’s not about waving it away. It’s about what you do in public vs private. Trump as a Putin co-conspirator or puppet is hard to square with his ordering soldiers to kill dozens of Russians in Syria, sending weapons to Ukraine, expanding US oil and gas extraction, and sending missiles to Poland.

All the whataboutism in the world cannot bury the fact that the Russians fucked with a US Presidential election.

Nor can it obfuscate the fact that the prime beneficiary and his supporters are pretending that the Russians didn’t fuck with the election.

You’ll plough a lonely furrow if you keep on pretending that there’s nothing to see here.

Yes, $400 million to Hillary Clinton via Bill Browder. I’m sure the Left is outraged about it.

Why are you changing the subject? The problem you have is that the Russians fucked with your election and the beneficiary of that act by a hostile foreign power is refusing to admit the truth about what happened.

High crimes and misdemeanours are two words that spring to mind right away. Impeachment is a third.

Bernard, Putin mentioned it at the press conference. I think he is combining two things, money Browder owes in taxes(a lot), with donations made by associates to Hillary(a lot but much much less than <—).
Putin enjoys hypocrisy game like this. He practically endorsed George W Bush, saying you are calling Iraq an illegal war, but what about Kosovo? He was there when Clinton's buddy Wesley Clark ordered a British commander to seize the airport from Russian troops.

I still hope that the number of decent people in the US is far larger than the number of people like the typical trump defender

It would be nice to think that the same is true in the UK. However, despite the Brexit referendum being very close and probably invalidated by breaches of electoral law, and only advisory not binding on Parliament, we’re still hearing that it was “the will of the people” and any problems with that claim – however obvious and profound – must be set aside.

“Yes, $400 million to Hillary Clinton via Bill Browder. I’m sure the Left is outraged about it.”

Buzzz. Another lie. There was no $400 million donation from Browder — that has been debunked.

If there is a single “Left” that is upset about it the reason is that liars like you keep throwing out these failed assertions. The link seems to be through the Ziff brothers, and records show about $315,000 to Clinton and the DNC, with $1.1 million to Democratic committees country wide.

Your problem, mikeN, is that you are too lazy to do any work to find actual issues to object to related to HRC. You stick to lies and old conspiracies (especially the fake crap about email and security leaks) that only other people who’ve swallowed some of the kool-aid you have believe. Stop being lazy, and dishonest, and do a little research to find real issues.

I’d ask if you didn’t have any shame but we know by now that you don’t.

BBD: more background on Browder and the reason Putin is interested in him.

Browder is a target of Putin for a simple reason: until 2005 is company did massive business (investment firm) in Russia. During some of those years he was involved in outing Russian oligarchs and some other officials who were found to be stealing from shareholders. Putin decided he didn’t like that (2003) and worked to have Browder expelled, in 2005.

After he was expelled Browder hired another Russian, a man named Magnitsky, to investigate further theft from his (Browder’s) companies. Putin had Magnitsky arrested and tossed in prison, where he died in 2009. Browder began agitating for an investigation, the process grew, and a “Magnistky Act” was passed barring Russian officials thought to be associated with details around Magnitsky’s death from entering the U.S. or (and this is what really seems to have pissed off Putin) using the U.S. banking system. (In an odd retaliation for this Putin and Russia blocked U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children. That might be a good thing because that adoption relationship suffered from extremely serious issues for many years. Still, it was an odd response to a business/financial row.)

Since 2012 Russia’s been after Browder: they claimed (with no evidence supplied) that he owed $500 million in unpaid Russian taxes, and that’s the biggest surviving “charge”. That’s what Putin tossed out during the “press conference” when he said: “We’ll let your intelligence folks interview the russians they named if you give us Browder.” Trump had some stupid response (redundant, I know, since everything he says is stupid) but Putin had to know that the US can’t “give” them Browder: he’s given up his U.S. citizenship (he saw what was coming) and now lives in London.

Thanks dean. Fascinating. I must apologise for not really paying close enough attention to the long, grim backstory to the Putin / US / World problem.

Interesting how MikeN’s lies often take swipes at the enemies of the Kremlin. I’m not suggesting that our Mike is affiliated with the Russian administration, rather that he is what was known as a ‘useful idiot’ by the last lot.

Yes I’m skeptical about the $400 million number, but it looks like the whole point of the conference isn’t to craze his enemies but to have Putin throw that out there for the media.
Ziff bros is just the same thing they were throwing out at the meeting with Trump Jr in 2016.
It sounds like he is saying something new, not just with Browder but a whole bunch of people.

Manipulating the British electorate to achieve a vote for Brexit was one of Putin’s proaganda triumphs of the last decade. It astonishes me that the government is persisting with Brexit at all considering that most UK citizens probably want to stay in the Union, and that the country (and indeed the whole Western alliance) will be profoundly disadvantaged by this breaking from the EU. Persisting with Brexit is a slow-motion exercise in a national cutting of British and Western throats…

The UK, the EU, the USA, and their allies should look long and very carefully into the future and infer what Putin’s end-game is. Russia has a huge reach around the world via its cyber-capacities, its Cold War espionage and psyops expertise, and the fact that it has the biggest pile of nukes of any country in the world.

Putin isn’t trying to fracture Europe and shatter the USA just because he wanted to snatch Crimea…

BBD, we know that cambridge analytica was hired by trump and some of the illegal crap they did with the data they obtained (by whatever means) was sent directly to Russia. Were they deep in the brexit stuff too? I’ve heard some hints at such but not seen any real discussion

A Vote Leave spokesman said: “The Electoral Commission’s report contains a number of false accusations and incorrect assertions that are wholly inaccurate and do not stand up to scrutiny. [LIE]

“It is astonishing that nobody from Vote Leave has been interviewed by the commission in the production of this report, nor indeed at any point in the past two years. [BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T BREAK THE LAW] Yet the commission has interviewed the so-called ‘whistleblowers’ who have no knowledge of how Vote Leave operated and whose credibility has been seriously called into question.[LIE]

“Vote Leave has provided evidence to the Electoral Commission proving there was no wrongdoing. [LIE] And yet despite clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Remain campaign [LIE], the commission has chosen to ignore this and refused to launch an investigation.[LIE]

“All this suggests that the supposedly impartial commission is motivated by a political agenda rather than uncovering the facts. [LIE]

You could almost be back in the USA. Different accents, same bullshit.

“It is astonishing that nobody from Vote Leave has been interviewed by the commission in the production of this report, nor indeed at any point in the past two years. [BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T BREAK THE LAW]

Sorry, tired – misread that as nobody from Remain was interviewed so ignore the [didn’t break the law] bit. Although it’s true. Only the Vote Leave campaign broke the law (repeatedly) and has been serially fined and is not being investigated by the police. At long fucking last.

Re “fake news”: I follow a podcast on data science (looking for tips for projects for courses). The hosts craft a series of episodes around a single theme, and the series just started deals with the use of AI to detect “fake news”, which they define as

Fake news is a new label for an old idea. For our purposes, we will define fake news information created to deliberately mislead while masquerading as a legitimate, journalistic source of truth.

The first episode was used to stress this is nothing new: a UFO hoax from the end of the 19th century (newspaper articles) and Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast were discussed. It should be interesting material.

““My people came to me — [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin — he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,””

He didn’t order that you stupid fuck — they were attacked by russians and their allies, and defended their positions. Why do you lie like that?

wondering what you were talking about. They weren’t attacked and defending their positions. Mattis had time to call the Russians on a deconfliction line, where they then claimed it wasn’t them, but mercenaries out of their control. Then America annihilated them, inflicting a 100% casualty rate, killing hundreds. This operation required forces flying from two places in the Arabian peninsula, 1500 and 1000 miles away(meaning the Russians were probably ambushed).

Yes, and he will continue to endorse his original statement. He’s not about to concede to anyone something that could be interpreted as he won by cheating. He will continue to highlight no collusion, and that the Democrats did not hand over the server(it’s as if he knows something about it he’s not telling:).

He also wasn’t going to invite Putin to a summit to browbeat him over something that Obama cared so little about that a standdown order was issued to the cyber team via Susan Rice as the activity was happening. He won’t do it even if the establishment in DC issued an indictment on the eve of the summit to try and get it canceled.

He said during the campaign he would try and have better relations with Russia, and he is still doing it. This is roughly what Obama said he would do, and sent a reset button too, but he let the establishment get the better of him and institute regime change in Ukraine.

Yes, and he will continue to endorse his original statement. He’s not about to concede to anyone something that could be interpreted as he won by cheating.

But it looks like he did win because of Russian interference. And his team knew about that interference and did not report it to the FBI at the time, which is at least one example of the shift from passive collaboration to active collusion. We’ve been through this already.

Your man is a cheat and a liar and in place because of the attack on American democracy by a hostile foreign power. And in your heart of hearts, you know all this.

Actually his supporters set up an election integrity commission last May. Didn’t even make it to 2018 because the Democrats wouldn’t cooperate.

More bullshit. That was not for “election integrity” — it was an attempt to strengthen voter suppression laws under the guise of exposing the “rampant voter fraud” that Trump and others on the right lied about: “If it weren’t for the millions of votes from people who shouldn’t have voted I would have won the popular vote.”

MikeN, when your lies are so thin that they can be exposed by memory you are no longer even trying to be a good right wing shill, you’re just mailing it in.

> cannot bury the fact that the Russians fucked with a US Presidential election.

Somehow the indictment left out that they tried to hack the Republicans too.
Why isn’t CrowdStrike getting any blame here? Marc Elias wasn’t too worried about the hacking when he found out about it. Apparently it happened the previous two elections too.

They took a few days to bring in CrowdStrike, and the hacking was ongoing while CrowdStrike was there. Most of the e-mails are from AFTER CrowdStrike appeared.
The indictment says GRU was inside the server until October. I would have thought it was standard practice to replace hardware.

So you don’t believe what was being said by the US military leader in the video linked above, and prefer to believe what was said by Der Spiegel sourced to about a half a dozen random Syrian soldiers? (I think it’s possible both can be true on major parts).

– Several defended him outright in dishonesty levels as high as mikeN’s

– Joe Wilson, possibly the shittiest of the bunch on this, said Trump did a great job on his trip, especially when he “strengthened the core of Nato” while “pointing out that having the US pay 90% of the cost of Nato is wrong” . Believing either of those things should disqualify you from being anything more than a assistant to a toilet cleaning robot, but we aren’t in a sane world

Observations have shown for years that the right was moving to be ever more racist, bigoted, and dishonest, and we’re reaping the downside of that.

You have to wonder how the right, who made a cottage industry of having hissy-fits about alleged scandals with President Obama (all of those scandals boiled down to “but he’s black”) and non-substantiated conspiracies about HRC can so easily accept Trump’s lies and actions.

* We learned on Friday that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated that new legislation enacted since the release of its February budget — alongside new projections on other spending and receipts — would add $101 billion more to the 2019 deficit, pushing it above $1 trillion, with no concern from the “economically minded” republicans. No surprise actually, since republican administrations have never been good stewards of spending or the economy

* The report also included lower projections for growth of the economy and salaries. It pointed out that since Trump has taken office salaries have increased a paltry 2.7%, but when inflation is considered the growth is negative. (Two things here: the numbers show the economy was growing at a faster rate when Obama left office since it has since, but it isn’t realistic to say that any changes in such a complex system are due to the influence of any single input. The reason no intelligent person believed the projections by Trump and his people is that those projections were more optimistic than history and collected data were possible: in short, pure crap made up to look good.)

Most of the lies Trump and his people have told and continue to tell are serious (look at the horrible news coming out of agencies tasked with science related issues for the most direct examples), but there are also lies that make you say “Why the fuck would he toss that out?” The most recent example comes from his meeting with the QOE (whom he stiffed by showing up 15 minutes late for tea).

We met with the queen, who is absolutely a terrific person, where she reviewed her Honor Guard for the first time in 70 years

Forget for the moment that there are pictures of her reviewing the Honor Guard many times, specifically once with President Obama. Consider the fact that she’s only been the queen for 65 years.

So when you think of all the racist things the right said and accepted about President Obama, all of the fake scandals they assigned to him, and the laziness demonstrated in cooking up unsupported allegations against HRC (when there are many legitimate issues to be concerned with), when they were willing to be so fundamentally dishonest there, then look the other way at the actions of the current administration, it’s easy to see why they are rightly described as vile people.

Yes mikeN, if you give a dictator what he wants while lying about it (and having people like you ignore facts and believe him) it will seem as though things are getting better with russia.

Re the ‘stand down’ bit mikeN references: it’s no surprise he’s once again lying by omission. Some reading on the issue, with a link:

Obama instructed Johnson to move immediately to shore up the defenses of state election systems. On August 15, Johnson, while in the basement of his parents’ home in upstate New York, held a conference call with secretaries of state and other chief election officials of every state. Without mentioning the Russian cyber intrusions into state systems, he told them there was a need to boost the security of the election infrastructure and offered DHS’s assistance. He raised the possibility of designating election systems as “critical infrastructure”—just like dams and the electrical grid—meaning that a cyberattack could trigger a federal response.
Much to Johnson’s surprise, this move ran into resistance. Many of the state officials—especially from the red states—wanted little, if anything, to do with the DHS. Leading the charge was Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, an ambitious, staunchly conservative Republican who feared the hidden hand of the Obama White House. “We don’t need the federal government to take over our voting,” he told Johnson.

Johnson tried to explain that DHS’s cybersecurity experts could help state systems search for vulnerabilities and protect against penetrations. He encouraged them to take basic cybersecurity steps, such as ensuring voting machines were not connected to the internet when voting was underway. And he kept explaining that any federal help would be voluntary for the states. “He must have used the word voluntary 15 times,” recalled a Homeland Security official who was on the call. “But there was a lot of skepticism that revolved around saying, ‘We don’t want Big Brother coming in and running our election process.’ ”

Brennan had serious news for his colleagues: The most recent intelligence indicated that Putin had ordered or was overseeing the Russian cyber operations targeting the US election. And the intelligence community—sometimes called the IC by denizens of that world—was certain that the Russian operation entailed more than spy services gathering information. It now viewed the Russian action as a full-scale active measure.
The other principals were surprised to hear that Putin had a direct hand in the operation and that he would be so bold. It was one thing for Russian intelligence to see what it could get away with; it was quite another for these attacks to be part of a concerted effort from the top of the Kremlin hierarchy.

But a secret source in the Kremlin, who two years earlier had regularly provided information to an American official in the US embassy, had warned then that a massive operation targeting Western democracies was being planned by the Russian government.

The other principals were surprised to hear that Putin had a direct hand in the operation and that he would be so bold. It was one thing for Russian intelligence to see what it could get away with; it was quite another for these attacks to be part of a concerted effort from the top of the Kremlin hierarchy.

But a secret source in the Kremlin, who two years earlier had regularly provided information to an American official in the US embassy, had warned then that a massive operation targeting Western democracies was being planned by the Russian government.

Thanks yet again, dean, for exposing another of MikeN’s deceptions. I now assume that pretty much any claim he makes is false or at the very least calculatedly misleading, but the hosing off of bullshit is always useful.

I’ll add that I’m always amazed at his sheer knowledge of all this fake news and false history – his fluent expertise in rightwing lies and misinformation must be quite hard work to achieve.

My bad, this detail was further down in the same link, not part of your excerpt.
So you have confirmed what I was saying. Not sure why you think it’s dishonesty by omission.
Yes they defended against attacks, but the retaliation was dropped, as the hacking was ongoing.
They didn’t get kicked out of DNC and DCCC until October.

If this link is to be believed, then the bogus Steele dossier was being used as evidence in their case against Russia. Either that or the authors are using the bogus Steele dossier to lie to the readers. We know it is bogus from Mueller’s latest indictment of 12 Russians. The person named in the dossier for hacking was not indicted.

It’s bogus as the person listed as organizing the hacking, who is currently suing Buzzfeed over it, was not indicted. Steele himself called it unverified and that he handed it over so FBI could investigate.

Again, no real evidence yet to support or deny it. Whatever happens, the fact that it had nothing to do with the start of the investigation against trump means it’s veracity or lack thereof will neither help nor hinder that.

No surprise here — after all, if the right isn’t in office there is a chance the new president could be non-white or non-male, or even one of the rare Republicans who still have a sense of dignity and honesty. Any of those would be terrible for folks like mikeN.

Yeah, but he isn’t dealing with anything mikeN. You are also omitting (surprise) the fact that the Republicans did all they could to stand in the way of President Obama moving against russia politically over Croatia. Your dissembling on this is stupid and annoying, and irrelevant. Even if you had a valid point (you’re running at 0 on valid points by the way, so you need to step it up), a shortcoming of one president doesn’t excuse any other president.

People knock appeasement, and I agree with the sentiment, but the reality at the time is Churchill’s warnings were ignored, and Britain and France were not ready to fight Germany. The Maginot Line actually held but Hitler invaded via Belgium.

“if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”

Another famous politician who was fooled by a clever and dishonest man once said:

‘The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ” … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”[3]

Later that day he stood outside 10 Downing Street and again read from the document and concluded:

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.[3]’

But Trump is not naive about his adversaries. He is basically doing the Chinese panda and dragon play. Best seen in his dealings with China, he calls Premier Xi a great friend and showers him with praise, then lays tariffs on them and attacks in other means.

Every time I see Churchill put up as some form of exemplar I nearly throw up. Why is this?

It is because I have studied history from sources other than Churchill apologists or hagiographers (Martin Gilbert springs to mind).

Churchill’s meddling in naval, and military affairs, derailed British plans to get a grip early on in WW1. He was instrumental in the confusion that allowed the German panzerkreuzer (latterly known as a battlecruiser) Goeben and cruiser Breslau to break through to Constantinople and thus be a driver for Turkey entering WW1 on the side of the Central Powers. This set the scene for the abortive Gallipoli campaigns in which Churchill had a hand against advice from the staffs who knew (whenever do politicians need experts – sound familiar) on making it a navy only assault to begin with.

Not only that it was one of Churchill’s appointees (Berkeley Milne) who lacked initiative thus exacerbating the effect of Churchill’s ambiguous orders (that is a very politician thing – provides wriggle room on culpability) who begot the real failure of fleet deployment. Milne escaped censure where a subordinate Ernest Troubridge took the fall.

Churchill had mishandled deployment of the Pacific fleet too by ordering the capture of some islands in the Pacific rather than concentrate on intercepting von Spee’s squadron of crack gunnery ships headed by SMS SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Spee’s squadron easily over-matched poor Sir Christopher Craddock’s ships the hastily manned with reservists, new entries and cadets with no chance for a work-up for effective gunnery even if the guns of Good Hope and Monmouth could have provided a fair fight, which they most certainly did not.

Cradock doubtlessly had the social and service punishment meted out to Troubridge in mind so did not hesitate to engage Spee despite an additional disadvantage with the light.

Or he’s a clueless, chaotic mess with no understanding of international trade or economics whatsoever,

No ‘or’ about it. Even worse, not only is Trump completely ignorant of such things, he has one of the worst business minds in the universe, Kudlow, as an adviser. Only the truly ignorant and delusional people could support these clowns.

In today’s news, Trump has invited Putin to come measure the Oval Office at the end of the year.

Also, Dan Coates was being interviewed live on air by Andrea Mitchell when he was told the news of Putin’s invitation to the White House and was naturally incredulous. His response has raised the ire of said White house, so I expect that his position as Director of National Intelligence is soon to end…

It’s one thing for people like mikeN to lie repeatedly about russia’s election meddling, and assert things hrc did that never actually happened, and lie about her receiving $400 million dollars, etc. — dishonest loons like him are too lazy to deal with facts.

But when the president not only repeats the same lies but also consistently says he doesn’t believe what his own intelligence people are saying, the public should be concerned. People who aren’t concerned, simply because this president is “the right race to be in office” – we should be even more concerned about.

Why should he believe his intelligence people when they are responsible for lies about him being a Russian agent, then leaked it to the press after telling him about it(and they lied when they told him about it, leaving out the Russian agent part!)?

…but Putin had to know that the US can’t “give” them Browder: he’s given up his U.S. citizenship (he saw what was coming) and now lives in London.

Could this be why the people of Britain are being frightened by the deployment of novichok nerve agent? It is a warning to those Russians domiciled in the UK who have crossed Trump’s pal Vlad.

OTOH I wouldn’t put it past agents of the state (the UK State) being behind this to distract attention away from …… you know the car crash that is Brexit. It has certainly been interesting to watch the timings of flooding of the news channels with stories propagated at key moments in affairs of the state, aka shenanigans in parliament.

Why should he believe his intelligence people when they are responsible for lies about him being a Russian agent, then leaked it to the press after telling him about it(and they lied when they told him about it, leaving out the Russian agent part!)?

Clapper admitted under oath that he talked about it with Jake Tapper. Brennan said he briefed Harry Reid on it, who subsequently wrote a letter to Comey about an FBI investigation into Trump and Russia.

The people who came to him to talk about Russian interference in the election were Clapper, Brennan, Comey, and Mike Rogers.

Comey then stuck around to tell Trump about the dossier, but only included a small part and left out details about Trump is working with Russia.

Why should he have faith in anyone but Mike Rogers, who was left out of the main part of the briefing?

It’s what he does. Change the subject. Move the goalposts. Whatever is necessary to divert attention from the fact that the Russians hacked American democracy and put Trump in the White House. And now Trump – not noted for his diplomacy – won’t say a bad word about Vlad in the Kremlin.